


Tailtean Mud

by OtoRose, ZoeGMiller



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Bondage, Dream Sex, F/F, Fear, Rough Sex, Trans Female Character, Transgender, Violence, dream - Freeform, i consider this consensual but it's rough, so tread carefully if you're sensitive please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 05:20:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20700587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtoRose/pseuds/OtoRose, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeGMiller/pseuds/ZoeGMiller
Summary: A fear surpressed is a a fear sublimated. But what is it Shamir's afraid of, exactly?





	Tailtean Mud

Shamir was a coward.

She knew it would come to this. Every night in the monastery she'd thrash in bed in bed with worry, hem and haw about what would happen if she saw her again. If she'd be overjoyed or terrified, awestruck or elated.

And now it had come to this.

The thundercrack of that sword burst orange into the night. It seemed to split the very sky open an summon the rain itself.

Retreat. Escape. Breaking off from a hard-fought battle as soon as she saw her face.

Her boots squelching through mud. Her arms in front of her face, to ward away the whipping pine needles. Every step a blind panic. Her ankle twisting. She stumbled forward, almost fell, braced against an ancient fallen tree, its moss-covered trunk as big as a battlement. Allowed herself time for a single gulp of breath, and to swipe the hair from her eyes. Then sprinting again, until her lungs burned and her joints ached. The faster she ran, the more possessive grew the mud. It grasped her, sinking her deeper with every step. How far away was safe? How far to escape the judgment in those eyes?

Nowhere. Nowhere could be far enough.

Through the mud of the Tailtean plains; the pine needles of the Sealed Forest, the cobbles of Garreg Mach—she could hear Catherine's footsteps pound across them, unhurried.

She always found what she sought.

It was Catherine’s very purpose; blessed to be loved by the church, blessed to be strong of arm, blessed to be of the blood most noble. Yet, she was a but a beast. No desires of her own a vessel for the Church of Seiros to fill. Thus, nothing could be more thrilling than the hunting of a heretic. Nothing made her eyes flash in the same way. No matter how hard Shamir had tried—which, in the back of her mind, she admits could have been harder. There had been a gap between them, across which Catherine now inexorably strode. A flash of lightning, the world so slow Shamir thought she might have seen the sword streak all the way to the heavens, the bolt plunge down its path.

Straight through her cloak.

Shamir gasped—or tried to—but the impact stole the wind from her. She stumbled forward, only able to take a step and a half before Thunderbrand fixed the radius of her movement. As she stumbled forward her pinned cloak seized around her neck. Strangled, her vision turned to spots. Her knees hit ground. Her gloved hands followed. She dug into the loam with both hands, animal instinct still begging to escape this fated confrontation by any means.

"Please!" Her voice choked, strangled in her throat. But not from the ties of her cloak around her neck.

But not from fear. Or not only from fear.

Please—what, then? Please—someone help? Please—don't do this?

Please—forgive me?

Knights of Seiros didn't operate in pairs. When Shamir was just a struggling remnant of an Enemy state, Catherine had been assigned to watch over her. To ensure that she did not spread heresy, to ensure that Shamir knew what was to happen to those who would turn their blades against the church.

By now, Shamir knew very well.

Catherine had joked that it would be a partnership, too earnest and thick to admit that it could or should be anything more than a working relationship, an animal and her keeper.

And then, the partnership just hadn't stopped…

How many nights had she stayed up overthinking this moment. The fear. The apprehension. The adrenaline running through her veins, highlighting every cut, bruise, and scratch. She felt every inch of her skin. Felt more inside her body than ever before. This, her partner. Come to claim vengeance.

But for what? The break from church? Or the break from her?

Shamir reached for her sword. When it was absent, she realized she must have discarded it in her flight from the battle. Quickly, she moved for the knife on her belt, but found that conspicuously missing too. She was propped on one elbow. The rain pattered an indictment on the back of her skull.

A hand on her back, gentle, thoughtful. Catherine could have been so much, if it hadn't been for Seiros. She caressed Shamir’s hair. It was the same, every night as this play repeated. Thunderstrike Catherine knelt alongside her quarry, offered her a gentle hand. That was the part Shamir liked the least. Love her or kill her, but only decide...

"If you're going to kill me, do it quick." She ordered, voice laconic as ever. Her boot kicked against Thunderbrand, pinning her fully to the ground. She wouldn't break.

Not even as her gloved fingers groped around Catherine's offered palm.

With one gauntleted hand, Catherine clasped Shamir. With the other, she wrenched Thunderbrand from the earth, freeing Shamir. With that same, fluid motion, she sheathed the weapon of saints up to the hilt in the stone of a nearby boulder, where the sword glowed—a beacon to Church forces, who would find Catherine and her quarry. Catherine wouldn't kill her yet. Catherine never did.

Some things belonged to Seiros.

On instinct, or a half-memory, Shamir cowered into Catherine's strong arms. Even through the armor, and the slick of the rain, she could feel Catherine’s warmth. The fullness of her breasts against hers. The smooth hollow of Catherine's neck, that her lips matched key-for-lock, exactly as she remembered.

Shamir was taut, powerful like a reed whip, silent and slender, capable of explosive action at just the right moments. But she was nothing next to Catherine. Catherine's muscles were corded, her back scarred, her presence dominating. Her skin sizzled against Shamir's, burning with Thunderbrand's power.

How strange. It always took half a breath for Shamir to realize her nudity. Exposed, the weight of her pauldron hung phantom on her shoulder still. She felt her nipples crinkle, moist from the rain that spilled down her body. Her abdomen tensed with this uncertain reality.

A moment of distraction, wasted. The impact against the boulder.

"Ah!" Her voice softer than usual, her body pliable. The orange blaze of Thunderbrand, so close, forced her eyes shut. Dashed against the boulder, her face grazed the blade. A hairline strand of red blossomed on her cheek, quickly swept away by the rain. Her hair matted into her eyes. Her shoulders tensed. As did her ass, upturned, and softer and rounder than she'd like...

How many times had Shamir asked for exactly this, on nights when the rain fell and Shamir could step out of the shadows and be vulnerable?

Rotten luck that Catherine waited so long.

Shamir merely lived in her body; it wasn’t inconvenient, but it could just as well be anything else, so long as it served her as well as it did. Catherine had fought her own body, struggled against it, shaped it to her preference, petitioned the aid of the church. Whatever Catherine might say about heresy, she'd never fought anything as hard as her own shape. Tanned, smooth, a ragged ponytail and scars only where they need be—the one just beneath her chin, the hairline slit beneath her breasts, the sunburst sitting lopsided along the firm warmth of her abdominal muscle. It was just as Shamir remembered her, the quiet reverence for Shamir's own scars, for her shape. Something like jealousy—Shamir could never understand why, exactly.

She panted. Pinned by the weight of the body she loved. Her feelings the obverse of Catherine’s. A muddling of jealousy and misunderstanding. She shuddered beneath Catherine. It hurt; the waiting. The pain twisted her guts into ribbons of fire. Catherine's hardness—and therefore, her need—grew imminent. It was exactly as Shamir remembered it. Frotting against her after a drunken post-battle celebration. Pinning her up against a wall and rutting between her thighs or crushed between their stomachs. And Shamir, wet and warm. Ready for her. Wanting her. Her wanting it. Her wanting Catherine. And permission never granted. Why? For some archbishop Shamir served out of nothing more than a want for coin or a country to call home.

And because it kept her close to what was truly important.

Sweat beaded on her back, invisible in the rain. It was as she imagined it. Hot, warm, seeping. This first skin-to skin contact.

The moment of hesitation, of uncertainty, before Catherine drove home, with the tension and poise of a true knight. As though there were some kind of chivalric order to fucking, necessary politeness and obligatory gestures, instead of the spontaneous rough scrabbling the mercenary had always known.

Clean and swift as ever, as though Shamir were an extension of Catherine's power, of her Crest.

It wasn't until Catherine entered her that she gasped. Ungodly big. It hurt! The slickness of her, the rain. It didn't help. This pain, it threatened to break her in half. Shamir screamed. It was NOTHING like she imagined it. No matter how large she thought it might be. No matter how powerful she feared. This was massive, untenable. She shook her head from side to side, a willful mare. Panic crashed against lust inside her with bone-shattering force.

Until Catherine reached forward, with two fingers hooked the corner of Shamir's mouth, forced her open wide. She cried out, and Catherine's fingers took that moment to rein her. She gagged and, blindly, gripped a hand back for Catherine's muscled hip.

Catherine, for all her inexperience and reluctance, worked with proficiency. Seiros herself had given her that body. Had given her the magical blood of her Crest. Her mumbled diversions and furtive, inexpert frotting had betrayed an irrational fear; perhaps, if Catherine had placed a love above her Saint—if Catherine had used her body for selfish pleasure rather than for execution of the will of the goddess—if she had defied Seiros by engaging with a non-believer...

Then Seiros very well might have taken that body away from her.

Shamir’s head spun once more. This time with an understanding.

Catherine wasn't afraid now. Catherine was as she wished to be, doing what she'd so long dreamed of. Catherine had no limits. Shamir thought it was all about to end, but all things up until this point were hardly the prologue. She grunted with the bruising effort of her ribs against the stone, with the heat of her lover’s sword radiating before her and that of her lover burning within her. Catherine tilted Shamir's head back, made it into a tribute to her Goddess. Shamir's open lips caught raindrops, trickling against her tongue and down her throat. Catherine's thrusts became sharp and short.

Shamir remembered, in her twisted sleep-understanding, what happened to those who misused gifts of the goddess. She wondered if there was anything more monstrous Catherine might become.

Was it her own fear, then, that turned Catherine's fingers into talons? Pouching her cheek and threatening to draw blood. Her body was shaking with the effort of containing Catherine's force. She might've wept, but the rain fell so heavy it was impossible for even her to know. She moaned, standing on her toes as the mud returned to rise and swallow her. It splattered her knees, and she was afraid. Each strike of Catherine's hips against her upturned ass hit with sharp as a slap. Her skin stung from the rainwater buffeted between them. Her breasts ached from their scrape against the mossy stone bracing her weight. And her wrists. Her wrists!

Her wrists?

They were bound to the bedpost.

Her pale skin was nearly as red at the wrists as Catherine's coarse leather hair tie that bound them. She grabbed the rungs of the bedpost for counterbalance, to fuck back just as hard as she was fucked. Now weeping, as Catherine mounted her, with a hand between her shoulder blades. Her breasts, pillowed in the soft bedsheets, still ached with the memory of the rock. She felt herself suffocating into the cushion, wet with her tears. Catherine's hair, loose, traced eldritch patterns over her with each thrust and withdrawal. The crest. Catherine's crest. Exposed itself in relief upon her skin. The scar that would not leave her.

Leaving—now there was a worthy fear.

Catherine was magnificent. Inexperienced, but so beautiful for it. The whole weight of their two worlds collided in each thrust. Shamir had no control of her body, shaking as she was. Overwhelmed by pain, situation, and thought. It took all she had to reach her legs back, trembling, to brace the soles of her feet against Catherine's buttocks. Forcing her inward. Yes—As she rutted downward , her clit begging for friction in the soft sheets—but not only that. Entreating her. A wordless plea. To stay.

Why had Shamir ever even thought to run? The lines had been drawn. Catherine's ferocious love on one side; mercenary payment on the other. It was just as likely that Catherine would have run her through as embraced her. Death was a reality, a threat in every battle. It wasn't that she was afraid Catherine would pursue her, inexorable hound that she was. It was the thought that she might not have. That she would have shrugged. Or let a mercenary escape.

Or forgotten.

Catherine hadn't so much as spoken her name, given her nothing but her body, this wild and new affection. She filled Shamir once more, hot and sticky with sweat. The ties meant that Catherine wanted her to stay, to live. Shamir had wanted them, too. Catherine might kill a foe, but she’d never bind one. Perhaps there was still hope—Shamir could go back, could repent and rejoin her love. Her muscles ached, pulled against her restraints, made the bed frame creak as Catherine filled her. But Catherine wore blood and sweat and death as easily as other women wore makeup or skirts or stockings. There could never be peace or satisfaction within her. It could only end as it always ended, back where it began.

She was running, Tailtean mud sucking at her boots.

Or was she?

Lives never lived flashed through Shamir's mind. They were together once more. They were together, wearing the remnants of what was once wedding finery. Together, wearing funeral weeds. Shamir felt it so deeply. The lace of a garter around her thigh. The fresh scent of forget-me-nots pinned to her hair. And Catherine so beautiful in her dress. Feminine, with a broad smile, and holding out her hand for Shamir to take. Shamir noticed the weight of a ring on her finger. A small silver band with a blue gemstone. She'd stowed it somewhere, these past five years. She wasn't even entirely sure where she'd left it. She craved it now. To hold it, to give her touch over to that cool, impassive metal.

She craved it, just as she craved the growing heat that redoubled itself with each of Catherine's thrusts. Her pillow-muffled moans soon became screams. Longed for more touch that just the heels of her feet. Longed for hands, unbound, to hold Catherine to her. Catherine discharged that duty; Shamir received it, her weight dragging upon her wrists. She longed to kiss her. To embrace her. She cried out, sobs of climax muffled first by bedsheets, then soft grass. Catherine was still atop her. The sun was shining, warm on their skin.

Crushed soft spring grass scratched at her, sudden sun bringing a flush to her bare shoulders. She was exhausted. She had been running—all night, or even longer. But there was something peaceful within. Warily, she turned her aching body over to her back. Catherine was above her, her arms above her head in a long stretch, lifting her breasts, tightening her muscles, showing off the tufts of blonde at the crease of her shoulders. She shone, smiling like the sun, then reached down and, with a callused thumb, wiped the drying tear-streaks from Shamir's face.

“I missed you, partner.”

For Shamir, that much was close enough.


End file.
